Credit Myth #48 - Experian, TransUnion and Equifax are credit scores.

[u/BrutalBodyShots]

It's very common for newcomers to credit to confuse credit scores and credit bureaus. Hopefully this helps to clear things up a bit.

Experian, TransUnion and Equifax are credit reporting agencies (CRAs) or "credit bureaus" which are companies that compile information about one's credit history. This information is available through your credit reports and can be fed into a scoring algorithm to return a credit score. Experian, TransUnion and Equifax are not credit scores. They are simply data sets that can be used to generate a credit score.

A credit score requires 3 parts:

1 - Bureau data (Experian, TransUnion, or Equifax)

2 - A scoring model (Fico, VantageScore, etc)

3 - A version of that model (Fico 8, VS 3.0, etc)

When referencing any credit score, you want to say each of these three parts above. Your "Experian Fico 8" or your "TransUnion VantageScore 3.0" are a couple of common examples.

When someone says "my Equifax score" or "my TransUnion score" or "my Experian score" they are leaving out 2/3 of the pieces of information that are needed to reference a score. No one has an "[insert bureau name] score."

We can also revisit Credit Myth #1 since it's related to this topic, which is that you only have one credit score:

https://old.reddit.com/r/CRedit/comments/1bpl3ud/credit_myth_1_you_only_have_one_credit_score/

[u/Funklemire]

Thanks for this! It's going to save me time next time I see this myth. It's a common misconception that I also had myself when I was first starting to understand credit scores.  

What really got me to realize we needed this post was when that guy who claimed to be a financial advisor with 30 years experience started condescendingly lecturing me about how banks report your information to FICO scores and how the bureaus are FICO scores.  

https://www.reddit.com/r/CRedit/comments/1i87jz8/experian_fico_scoring/

I understand how newbies get confused by this - I was one of those newbies - but the dude worked in finance for 30 years and was still confused by this. That's when I realized how pervasive this confusion is.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/Funklemire]

That discussion was just scary. It goes back to the myth on how those in the business don't always give the best advice and are even credit-ignorant in many ways quite often.

https://old.reddit.com/r/CRedit/comments/1em36d6/credit_myth_26_those_in_the_credit_business_only/

[u/soonersoldier33 → u/BrutalBodyShots]

My best friend is a realtor, and has been for 20+ years. He's very trustworthy and good at what he does. He has a really solid mortgage broker that he refers his clients to who's been in the business at least as long and who knows how to get his clients the 'best' rates based on their finances and middle mortgage score. They make such a great team of people legitimately trying to make a living while not screwing other people, but they both call me, weekly, to help people get their middle mortgage score 'over the next threshold', if it's possible, to help them qualify for a better rate. I'm always happy to help, but I'm also like, I'm a dude on Reddit that wrecked my own credit and wanted to learn how to repair it. You're basically the industry 'experts', and you're calling me? Like, just wow! Lol

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/soonersoldier33]

Funny how that works, isn't it? At least unlike most "experts" they don't discount your knowledge, nor do they profess to be more credit-savvy than you. I suppose a friendship can do that, where on Reddit no one is "friends" in that sense.

[u/Obvious_Stuff_1705 → u/BrutalBodyShots]

Your info is very much appreciated!

[u/SweetLoveofMine5793 → u/BrutalBodyShots]

BBS always doing the good work here. Thank you!